Does the name of spinach, mustard, beet greens or turnip greens make you or your family go Ewwww…..?? Well, in my household until recently, this was the scenario and I decided to do something about it. That’s when I started to research about different greens, trying various versions / recipes and then coming out with the few most delicious ones. Kids and everyone at home now love to have greens almost 2-3 times a week. And I am talking about the local varieties, yes.. Not just the icebergs.
Many of the nutrients greens have are actually fat soluble. This implies that when cooking greens or having them in salads, it’s always a good idea to pair with some form of healthy fats. ( This is a super important tip for cooking greens..)
This also helps in easy absorption and assimilation. Just adding this one step to your cooking and meal prep, will take off so much burden away of including some form of greens in your diet.
Let’s look at a few ways to make greens exciting and healthy and tasty at the same time
- Always buy organic greens. If not, grow your own. With the recent times, you do not want to risk your health with some badly grown food.
- Greens like spinach, methi, amaranth, mustard taste best as cooked with spices of your choice. But if you want to eat these as a side dish or salad…( read along)
- Blanch these greens and then chop them into pieces. Prepare a dressing with a cold pressed oil like gingelly or coconut oil, garlic, chilli flakes and mix the greens with this.
- Kale is best used as a salad by first chopping it and then rubbing the kale leaves with some himalayan salt and lemon. Leave it aside for some time. And your kale is ready to use. Lemon and salt remove the bitterness from the kale, making it a lot more palatable.
- Another tip is to use nut butter as a dressing.
- My favorite dressing is a mix of tahini+cashew butter+greenchill+ lemon salt. Just pour it over any greens and trust me, you will want more every day.
- Use your greens to make pesto and then either spread it on your toast or toss your pasta or in your wraps.
- Eating greens with lentils is a common practice in India . Its a very common food item in the daily meals in the afternoons as “keerai”, which is basically the local greens cooked with some lentils and some spices added for a complete meal.